True, it can also break me. Not in a way that needs fixed...just broken open.

True, I can over-do. Currently excavating the demons in that one. Worthiness. Pride. Proving. Sadness.

My word for 2014 has been CREATE and I'm keeping with it until Imbolc of 2015, then I'll transition into a new word. My soul has been loving the accomplishment I've had with this journey. Loving the risks I've taken because of this word. Love the opening of old wounds it has brought me. Particularly the wound that is home to my artistic story. I've always been creative. Imaginative. And in high school I took an art class that was a big light in my dark teenaged days. I FELT when I was in art class and feeling for this gentle badass is a necessity for engaging in life. The connection of my imagination playing out with my hands in front of me gave my pains a voice that couldn't be manipulated by others. I really enjoyed art class. Then...when I got home there were cows and horses to feed, irrigation to change, fences to fix, and the other angsts of a rebel soul in the prime of adolescence.

My old arty story: Art was something my folks liked to know was in the world....but it doesn't pay the bills. It doesn't get stuff done. It is a fancy luxury for the kind of people who don't live in the real world. My art class projects were praised...followed quickly by the litany of ranch chores and how there was not enough time to get everything done before the next season change. Followed by the battle cry of how we all have to work harder and longer to get it all done. No fun till the work is done. Therefore, all those art supplies I secretly bought to play with at home sat unopened until I tossed in the towel and agreed with the story that was people pleasing for my family. Then I tossed those supplies out in a fit of sadness that I wasn't seen for more than the work that I did. Bitterness for beauty was born. The pain of abandoning my Self for what was easy fed my already belligerent skill-set. I settled into my worth being that of what I did...not who I was.

My desire to create has never truly died though. My soul kept it alive by masking my art as going the extra mile in my old job by doing the flyers and label creating. Anything creative, I volunteered for the job. That lil' artist in me sustained itself on small breaths of card-making or coloring with my lil' girl (who isn't so little anymore...gulp). I created art through the filter of taking risks and trying to DO things I've never done before....like taking my deer and elk hides from a successful hunting season and figuring out how to process them and make sacred sound medicine. And well, uh, let's face it...this is now one of my most successful aspects of Soul Craft. So, yeah...even our filters and masked truth can produce incredible and unexpected magic. But, my point here is that even though I have been telling myself the story that art is not a valuable commodity, nor a worthy use of time; my actions have been living out a filtered version of another true story. A more current story.

This new story being played out through filtered actions is one of deep desire to create beauty as art as well as create function as art. This filtered story of my actions has been laying out my story of now. Now, I have a hubby who wants me to do what makes me happy. He sees my value in who I am and not so much in what I do. Priceless. My current season of life is one of crazy transforming and I'm kinda in resistance to it, which we all know makes it harder, and in this resistance I'm finding that I have a huge repressed resource of creative power in my art-self. And this art-self wants OUT. She has shit to say and is making my body slow down with pain to the point that the only thing I can do is the slow luxury of staring at a canvas and crying myself onto it with colors and textures. My story of now weaves a very different tale. A story that tells me I have freedom, love, and space to begin again in any way I choose.

When I listen to both sides of this story with a sacred ear I hear a new true story being told. Instead of hearing my folks tell me it's not worth my time and hearing in this the lie that I'm not worthy of beauty and only valuable based on how much I get done; I'm hearing now the memory of them telling me that the painting I brought home was really good. I'm remembering their impressed confusion at the disturbing sculpture I created in class. I'm seeing how one of my high school paintings is still displayed in their home. Tucked in a corner...but still displayed. My sacred ear is hearing that maybe, just maybe, the stories they told me were their fears based on their own life struggles. My sacred ear is hearing that I had good reason back then to follow that story. Ranch reality is one of much doing. Animals rely on their caretakers. Nature is not something you can plan around but do have to have the grit to work around. My sacred ear hears the reality of this.

I don't live on a ranch anymore. My stories and agreed to beliefs on this subject now live a very different reality.

My sacred story of now is telling me a story of wholeness. I can take the ability to “get-r-done” that comes from ranch life and apply it to the artist that wants to create beauty as well as function. I am choosing to keep my old story as it is. Accepting it instead of re-writing it. Taking it as just one layer of the whole masterpiece. Just like this painting has been unfolding itself in many different layers. The story I had that suffocated my inner artist is not a story I want to change because it has brought me focus, work ethic, and drive to finish what I start. It has brought me the ability to begin something instead of just letting it swirl in my idea bank. And like this painting, I'm adding the layer of my story of now. The layer that says I have abundant time to work authentically and from my heart/soul. I have support. I have desire to manifest the messages from my inner world in ways that remind me of who I am and hopefully inspire others to hear with the same sacred ear that lies within them.

So, the painting you've seen unfolding admist these words is my first painting in over 20 years. I began Pixie Lighthorse's Visual Quest in November which gave me that much wanted push to reopen the book of this evolving story of my inner artist. Pixie guides her questers through painting in a Shamanic way and teaches much more than art. For me, it's given my soul another voice dimension...one without words. One with beauty and a stirring of something visually magical. In VQ we are granted permission to layer. Listen. Observe. We are encouraged to detach from expectations so we can let it flow to it's outcome. And as you can see by the pictures, this piece has many layers. All so different from each other. And as my own story of now is being owned and accepted by me I can see that my old stories are just layers that give texture to the beauty and power that I can be now.

Layer and layers of my old stories. Through intention, movement, and some sacred profanity...I've broken open to let some more of me out of the dungeon. Am I an artist? Well, not trained or educated...but I have an artist soul. A creative fire. A unfolding inner queen. And a love of get-r-done.